Ashton
I walked up the steps, my heart hammering in my chest, uncertainty rushing through my veins as my ears hurt from the constant harsh beating of my eardrums against them. Sweat accumulated on my forehead when I removed it with the back of my hand, nervousness wrapping itself around me as I took in shallow, deep breaths to replace the oxygen that had suddenly and rapidly left my body. I rarely sweat.
My feet landed on the fifth floor when I stopped and breathed in through my nose, sealing my lips shut to trap in some of the built up tension within. I never wanted to fully let go of my stress within me and feel at ease. It felt foreign to me, especially after all those years after my mom passed away, tucking me under the wing of a vicious humanly figure who called me his father. Even he didn't admit to be called a dad. So to keep my pressures within me, my stress within me? Even when it felt burdening and tiresome and suicidal, it felt like home, it felt like family.
I never found myself worrying or stressing over such situations but you can't help feeling this when the person at the other end is the only one woman you have ever fallen in love with, given your heart entirely to her knowing how dangerous it can be. Knowing that at anytime, they can break it into a million pieces and give the torn pieces back to you when you, of all situations, choose this scenario to be silent on. You keep staring at the broken pieces when your heart tells you that you still don't care about those broken pieces, you never did. It's that woman who broke them and is walking away now. You still want to keep her despite what she did to you because that's how stupid love is. It's pure slow poison without even injecting a liquid through a syringe into you.
You look up towards her and find her back already towards you, walking so so so far away where you are sure that you can never reach her even if other people can. Even if she decides to fall in love with someone else and have a life with them? There's nothing you can do but just be a bystander and look at that one person you love with everything you have, and witness her hold another man's hands and finally walk away. To start a new life, a new story and grace welcome to new beginnings even if she set the past land that she left ablaze in riveting flames. And even amidst that, you feel a string pulling your broken heart out of your body as it drags along on the floor right behind her, getting dirty and more bruised on the way but never finding enough space to be in her heart.
And never enough encourage to completely let go of her.
Love makes you weak. It makes a strong strong man fall down onto his knees never to get back up again, living his breathing life as a mere reminder of all the pain he is yet to endure without knowing what sins he committed except for loving that one person unconditionally. Even more than himself.
And you? You let it. You let it all happen because you'd rather be attached to that string that it still attached to her than be anywhere where she isn't. That's what love does to you.
I took in a deep breath, my hand clutching the bouquet of roses even more closer to me than I ever had before. Timidly, I walked up to our room and gently knocked, the voice of my angel's drifting from the other end, "Come in!"
Slowly turning the knob around, I opened the door and peeked in to see her curled up on the sofa, legs tucked underneath her as she read a children's book to our youngest, Guilia. Guilia was six months old and a carbon copy of me except for her nose and lips. That, was all Sophia's. Guilia grinned at me with absolutely no sign of any teeth when she kicked her chubby little legs out, extending her arms to fly across the room and be in my embrace. Shutting the door behind me, I walked up to my wife and my little baby, when setting the flowers aside, I placed my arms parallel to each other in front of my chest as Sophia gently shifted the little minion from her embrace to mine.
